NYC diners are fed up with having to sit cheek-to-cheek at communal tables at upscale restaurants like Il Buco Alimentari (pictured) in NoHo. Photo: Rahav 'Iggy' Segev / Photopass

(
)

Like any serious food lover dining in New York, Kareem Mayan, 35, did his due diligence. Before coming to the city in late February, Mayan, who lives in Vancouver but travels often, made reservations for a birthday dinner with his girlfriend at Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria, a NoHo Italian joint that opened last fall, and whose $21 pastas, $38 short ribs and $40 plates of jamon Iberico di bellota have received raves from critics.

Despite their reservation, they ended up being seated next to each other on stools at a tall communal table in the store area at the front of the restaurant.

The two grabbed what he calls a “phenomenal” drink and a meat plate, but didn’t stay for dinner. Instead, they plan to save their fine-dining celebration for a meal at Babbo next month, presumably at a table for two.

While communal dining has long been standard at cheap ramen joints and casual pizza parlors, it’s becoming increasingly common among the city’s trendier, pricier restaurants like newly opened RedFarm and Il Buco Alimentari. They join downtown hot spots like gourmet pizzeria Co., Momofuku Ssäm, Sorella and Socarrat, which have crammed their customers into cafeteria-style dining for years.

And not everyone is happy to get to know thy neighbor — especially after making reservations weeks in advance or waiting hours for a table.

Maria Miller, a 26-year-old Upper West Sider, recently had what she called on Yelp the “worst experience I’ve ever had at a restaurant” at RedFarm, the small but hugely popular West Village Asian fusion restaurant, where there are routine waits for its 42 seats, 28 of which are at communal tables.

Miller and her husband were seated across from each other at the 2 ½ -feet-wide farm table in the middle of the restaurant, and were barely able to converse across the expanse. She says she doesn’t mind sharing a long table for a cheap meal at Le Pain Quotidien, but “at RedFarm you’re easily spending $100, so I think you should get better accommodations.”

Communal dining can make for other kinds of awkwardness.

Jason Brandt Lewis, a 58-year-old wine industry retiree, was visiting from California and having lunch at a communal table at the East Village’s Momofuku Ssäm last fall when he realized the obnoxious stranger next to him was gossiping about a mutual friend he was seeing for dinner that very evening.

“It was all just too funny!” he recalls. “Whoever said New York was a big city?”

Historically, New York restaurants did have communal tables. “Even the tony Rotunda at the Astor House was communal dining,” William Grimes, the author of “Appetite City: A Culinary History of New York,” says of the favorite luncheon spot for the city’s gentlemen in the late 1800s. As more restaurants opened, he says, “eating at your own table became the norm.”

In recent years, though, it’s started to become more of an exception. “There are a lot more communal tables than there used to be,” says The Post’s restaurant critic, Steve Cuozzo, who, along with Grimes and others, roughly traces the current trend to Asia de Cuba opening in 1997 with a noteworthy long, high, glowing marble communal table. “It’s part of the relentless informalization of dining, which is a wonderful and a terrible thing,” Cuozzo says.

John S., 50, works in publishing, lives downtown and used to frequent Il Buco Alimentari regularly until the crowds — and the communal tables — got to be too much. (He declined to give his last name just in case he decides to go back.)

“I’m not such a sensitive person,” he says of a recent dinner there, but “it felt like we were next to a crazy bachelorette party . . . there was a lot of screaming.” It was especially uncomfortable given that he and his wife were dining with some “slightly stiff” Upper East Side friends who consider dining downtown a risky adventure. “All their prejudices were fulfilled,” he says.

“The people that complained, by the end of their meal, they’re usually smiling,” says Donna Lennard the owner of Il Buco Alimentari.

At Tertulia, the acclaimed West Village tapas restaurant, chef/owner Seamus Mullen says his two communal tables, which make up about 16 of the 84 seats, help remind us that “food and wine are really about enjoying the company we keep and not to be taken too seriously.”

RedFarm’s Ed Schoenfeld is a bit more pragmatic. “It’s what made sense in terms of the space,” he says, admitting that the setup helps fit in more diners, and works with the cozy farmhouse decor.

Despite nightly complaints, he still plans to have similar seating at a new Upper West Side location opening later this year.

“[It’s] consistent with our kind of style of service and wanting to be a place that’s hard to get a table,” he says, adding that at least “I have backs on my chairs” — unlike some other places he won’t mention by name.

And there are still plenty of diners who are more than happy to share a table.

“It definitely adds to the experience,” says Aaron Toomey, a 25-year-old Park Slope resident who works in finance, after sitting next to strangers while dining at Momofuku Ssäm last month.

Carol Anderson, 65, a RedFarm regular who lives on the Upper East Side, still fondly recalls her first communal dining experience — at Asia de Cuba years ago, of course — and has even kept in touch via e-mail with people she’s met at RedFarm.

“It’s a microcosm of NYC,” she says, “like riding the subway or standing in the checkout line at Fairway.”